Aspiring student organizer Samantha Rushbad grapples with the simultaneously inspiring, mind-numbingly banal, infuriatingly stupid, and downright absurd nature of campus activism as she starts a campaign to force her college to divest from Israel. As Sam steps ever-further into the labrynthine world of activism, she must also deal with her mother, love interest, teachers, and friends who fail to understand her activist life.

And yet, in the Biblical Pesach story, Rasha is not left behind. The entire Jewish community -- the wise, the wicked, the simple, and those who don’t know how to ask -- cross the red sea together. And together they wander for forty years, diasporic and free, a group filled with doubters and dissenters and rebels. In other words, questioning the Jewish community does not mean that we are separating ourselves from it. We question not from a place of distance but from a place of caring, engagement, and connection. And efforts to keep out the challengers, to blunt our teeth, are doomed to fail.

Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians are invoking (their misunderstood version of) Jewish law as a means to further their interests. Namely, they’re exploiting Jews and Jewish law in order to gain support for discrimination. And with Passover on the horizon, these references are become more pointed - and more uncomfortable.

Well, that was awkward.
Just a few days after announcing that it had hired Simone Zimmerman to be its national Jewish outreach coordinator, the Bernie Sanders campaign suspended her position yesterday, in reaction to loud, right-wing criticism of her positions, activism, and language in opposing the Israeli occupation and its enablers. I had planned yesterday to take on her chorus of critics for their ethically compromised and sometimes farcical gotcha-combing of Zimmerman’s very public and proud paper trail. Now, I must add some serious, head-shaking, profound disappointment in the Sanders campaign for what really looks like management amateur hour.